1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a system and method for providing interfaces between management models and system consoles. More particularly, the present invention relates to a system and method for creating a neutral graphical user interface from a generic management model.
2. Description of the Related Art
There is an industry trend toward using standardized software engineering tools and techniques to represent the design of systems to manage real world objects. One such approach is using the Unified Modeling Language (UML) and a derivative of UML called the Common Information Model (CIM). Using UML and CIM, developers can describe a computer information system that is not bound to a particular implementation or platform. CIM includes both a CIM Specification and a CIM Schema and UML is generally used to show the structure of the schemas.
The CIM Specification includes a language model, naming conventions, meta schema, and mapping techniques used to map the CIM data to other management models including SNMP, MIBs, DMTF, and MIFs. The CIM Schema includes a set of classes with associations that provide a well understood conceptual framework within which it is possible to organize the available information about the managed environment.
The CIM Schema includes three layers. First, the Core Schema includes an information model that captures notions that are applicable to all areas of management. Second, the Common Schema includes notions that are common to particular management areas but independent of a particular technology or implementation. There are generally five Common Schema areas: (1) systems, (2) applications, (3) networks, (4) devices, and (5) physical areas. The third CIM Schema layer is the Extension Schema area which includes technology specific extensions of the Common Schema. The Extension Schema area may be specific to a particular operating environment, such as a UNIX operating environment. The Extension Schema may further describe either a specific-general type of environment (i.e., an MS-Windows™ environment, a UNIX-90 environment, etc.), or a product specific operating environment (i.e., Windows 2000 Professional™, IBM AIX version 3.5, etc.).
While CIM includes notations and conventions that are widely agreed upon in industry, a CIM model does not provide information for product development because a CIM model is implementation independent, meaning that a common CIM model can be used as a design starting point to develop systems in a particular operating environment. A CIM model may be stored in a Managed Object Format (MOF) file, which is an ASCII file that includes a formal definition of the CIM Schema. The MOF is used as input to a MOF editor, parser, and compiler. CIM is produced by designers and developers to model a product. The CIM model is then used by others as input to management systems. However, the process of using a CIM model as input to management software is a resource intensive task. A challenge, therefore, with the prior art is the time and resources needed to design a system using CIM and write programs directed towards a particular operating environment.
Management consoles, such as the Microsoft Management Console (MMC), the AS/400 System Console, the Tivoli Console, and WebSM™, allow common applications from which a user views and manipulates data associated with a software program or device that is accessible by the console. Another challenge in the current art is that a CIM model that models a computer information system is generally unable to interface with a management console without writing separate programs that implement the computer information system and interface with one or more of the available management consoles. What is needed, therefore, is a system and method that allows developers to describe a system in a model (such as a CIM model) and provides interfaces from the model to one or more management consoles without the need of additional programming.
Additionally, computer information systems often include additional data that is not natively viewable by standard console interfaces. Therefore, what is further needed is a system and method for converting a managed object definition to a format suitable to be viewed and manipulated with a management console. In addition, because many consoles include graphical user interface displays, and because many users prefer using graphical user interfaces, an additional need is converting the managed object definition to a graphical user interface to be viewed and manipulated by a user.